OREANDA-NEWS. March 20, 2012. BM&FBOVESPA has been elected the most sustainable Latin American exchange (Best Sustainable Stock Exchange 2012) in the `Exchanges & Brokers Awards’ promoted by UK-based financial magazine World Finance. The award was created in 2007, with voting by the magazine’s international readership.

BM&FBOVESPA was the first stock exchange in the world to be a signatory to the Global Compact, in 2004. In 2010 it made an official commitment to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), becoming the first emerging country exchange to take this step. It is a member of Brazil’s PRI coordination Engagement Group. The Exchange is also a member of the Advisory Group of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in Brazil.

Furthermore, BM&FBOVESPA currently has two indexes based on socio-environmental questions. One is the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE), created in 2005 with the objective of measuring the performance of companies with a clear sustainability strategy based on corporate governance criteria, respect for the environment and social responsibility. The other is the Carbon Efficient Index (ICO2), launched in 2010 in partnership with BNDES and calculated from the liquidity and greenhouse gas emissions of its component companies. Furthermore, since the end of last year BM&FBOVESPA has handled an Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) based on ISE companies alone.

Since the creation of the Novo Mercado in 2000, the Exchange has made good corporate governance practices a determining factor in the quality of information provided to shareholders and, consequently, in risk reduction. In 2011, for the first time, the Exchange published its Annual Report with simultaneous financial and nonfinancial information, in a meeting with the Association of Capital Markets Analysts and Investment Professionals (APIMEC). It thus encouraged analysts to incorporate socio-environmental and corporate governance questions in the assessment of share prices and in investment decision making.

Another recent initiative captained by BM&FBOVESPA is “Report or Explain”, in which the Exchange recommends that publicly-traded companies state in the Reference Form whether they publish a Sustainability Report or similar document, and where it is available. If they do not they must explain why. The purpose of this is to provide a databank about the sustainability of Brazilian publicly-traded companies, for the public at the Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, to be held in Rio de Janeiro in July.